Just to bring you up to speed about this project, it started more than six months ago when I first saw video footage from the Canon 5D Mk2. Then I saw more footage shot on it and managed to try one briefly at The Flash Centre in Leeds and was hooked. I knew just the project for it.
Ice Driver is owned by my good friend Andy McKenna – I helped set up the company when it began four years ago. Every year, he takes a fleet of cars to Sweden with clients and instructs in the art of driving on ice. The concept is superb, but it’s difficult to describe the speeds acheived, as most people expect little more than walking place. He needed some video footage and I had an itch to scratch.
So the question I posed to Canon and Graham at The Flash Centre was, “Is the 5D Mk2 as tough as my 1DS and would it survive being mounted to the outside of a rally car driven at high speed across a frozen lake in northern Sweden at -25c, plus wind chill?” Only one way to find out, take one and try it….
So planning started with a wish list of gear on one side and the weight limit of airline check in luggage on the other. I’m a lightweight traveller whenever possible and was really intrigued by Chase Jarvis’ “How to pack for a road trip” video. A funny and useful watch if you half a free half hour and some coffee, but for this trip, a non-starter.
A video head was a must, but the ‘sticks’ used by broadcast crews were out, I needed to stay below 20Kg check in, so Graham suggested a Manfrotto 501HDV head with 438 ball levelling cup to fit onto my existing Manfrotto 1900 alloy tripod.
For the camera and immediate kit, most of the shooting was to be on a frozen lake at -20c or below, so a BG-E6 battery grip and a second battery pack was added. I’d been warned that as well as batteries, the 5D eats memory cards when shooting video, so three 8Gb SanDisk cards were added to my collection, plus two Seagate 320gb Free Agent firewire 800 hard disks for backups.
There are some excellent online resources for shooting video on the 5D Mk2, so I won’t go over it all again, just to say that theere is an excellent resource put online by The Guardian’s Dan Cheung and also a great guide to exposure and focus settings by Tyler Ginther on Vimeo were very useful in figuring out the obvious stumbling blocks and work arounds.
The next thing was sound. We needed a separate source to record engine notes and ambient noise inside the cars. Time was running short, so step forward my friend and colleague Nick Wilcox Brown who generously offered to load me his H4 stereo recorder. Many people are using Rode mics and other devices on the hot shoe, but I needed an off-camera source for when the camera was mounted in the wind outside.
Finally, the Steadicam Merlin I’ve previosuly mentioned was packed and the whole lot dumped on the check in scales. £90 worth of excess baggage charges and the most rigourous baggage search I’ve ever had out of my local airport and we’re moving at 5.00am
Fourteen hours later and I’m stepping off the train into the familiar breathtaking air of the Jamtland area of Sweden and minus 18c.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Those are some cool shots (including the previous post). Sure like to see how the video goes as well. Not an easy process I suspect, in such cold weather.